“Superbug” sounds fun and cartoonlike, but this is serious, folks. A gene that can make many types of bacteria resistant to nearly all antibiotics doctors have at their disposal is on the loose in three states.

Healthland noted earlier that this gene had made its way from India to Japan, but now cases of the drug resistant bug, found mostly in gut and urinary tract infections, has made people sick in California, Massachusetts and Illinois. All of those affected, like the Japanese patient, had recently been treated at hospitals in India, indicating that India may be the reservoir for the gene.

“It’s just a matter of time,” Dr. M Lindsay Grayson of the University of Melbourne ominously told the AP, referring to a day when this mutated bacteria would become more prevalent.

In the meantime, wash your hands and practice good hygiene. If you can avoid antibiotics, do. If you need them, take them properly.